But I did claim credit for Trinity Hall. I told them how the alarm was given, and hinted . . .
And before I saw Sheila, in the evening of the day after the Great Fire of Shuteley, I knew that I'd made the right choice -- for us.
You can't make a scapegoat of a man who knows more of the facts than anyone else. A man who knows things and you can't figure out how he could possibly know them. A man who knows more than he will tell, unless you've worked out three-quarters of the answer first.
Yes, for us I'd made the right choice. And perhaps for Shuteley, for my world. The knowledge, the unwilling certainty, that there had been something supernatural about the fire made the whole thing easier to bear, to accept. For those who had lost people they loved, too, there was hope.
They might still be alive, somewhere.
But had I done the right thing for Snow White and the giants? Had they all ceased to exist -- or had they found the Gift back among them, worse than ever before? Had I dropped a biliion hydrogen bombs on the world of 2097?
Well, my attitude proved that I'd been doing Miranda and the giants an injustice all along in finding them inhuman about our world.
About their world, I couldn't care less.
[back cover blurb]
SHE WAS
THE FAIREST
IN THE LAND
NO MATTER WHERE
SHE CAME FROM -- OR WHEN!
VAL CALLED HER SNOW WHITE
BECAUSE OF HER GLOWING PALE SKIN
AND HER BLUE-BLACK HAIR.
BUT HER FRIENDS FRIGHTENED HIM.
THEY WERE TOO PERFECT
TO BE QUITE HUMAN.
THEY WERE TOO CALM, TOO DETACHED.
WHEN HE DISCOVERED
THEIR POWERS, AND THE USES
TO WHICH THEY MEANT TO PUT THEM,
VAL KNEW THE MOST AWFUL
OF HIS FEARS HAD BEEN
MORE THAN JUSTIFIED!
Snow White and the Giants Page 21